AFTER A
SEVERAL-YEAR ABSENCE, NORTHWEST retail and opaque fares
are once again available through Priceline.com and its LowestFare.com
unit. Northwest and Priceline announced Oct. 3 that they entered
into a new distribution agreement, paving the way for the airline's
return to Priceline. Northwest exited Priceline's name-your-own
price business in May 2002, complaining that Priceline changed its
business model when it began experimenting with selling retail and
branded airline tickets. And Northwest exited Priceline and
LowestFare.com in November 2004, with the airline citing the high
distribution costs, including the GDS fees associated with selling
tickets through Priceline. This week, Al Lenza, Northwest's vice
president of distribution and e-commerce, stated that
"Priceline.com has developed a supplier-friendly structure and
offers marketing opportunities that meet our needs and allows us to
broaden the online base of travelers we serve." Asked to clarify
what "supplier-friendly structure" means, Northwest spokesman Roman
Blahoski said "Priceline.com has provided Northwest with
competitive distribution economics."
SIDESTEP has rolled out a U.K. Web site and
also introduced its downloadable comparison-shopping toolbar in the
U.K. and Ireland markets. There was a bit of a glitch with the
domain name, however, as typing www.sidestep.co.uk brings users to
TravelSupermarket.com, a comparison shopping site unaffiliated with
SideStep. The correct url for the U.K./Ireland site is http://uk.sidestep.com. (To help things along, when
users in the U.K. type www.sidestep.com into their browser, they're taken to
the SideStep site at http://uk.sidestep.com.) Consumers can use the search
engine to look for air, car, hotel, package and activities
inventory. SideStep strikes marketing deals with suppliers and
online agencies and transfers users to third-party Web sites for
booking. In addition to conducting searches on the Web site, users
can download the SideStep toolbar, which opens in a separate window
when they perform travel searches on popular online agency sites.
SideStep then offers a comparable deal from its partners. SideStep
said the U.K. Web site provides access to deals from 600 airlines,
125,000 hotels and 30,000 car rental facilities.
AGENTWARE, which provides travel agencies
with search and booking functionality for non-GDS content, began
offering agencies VIA Rail Canada inventory through AgentWare's
Trip Console offering. The companies said the booking functionality
will enable corporations to retain access to Canada's national
passenger train service, including its inter-city rail schedules,
as VIA Rail Canada "withdraws its inventory from the GDS in the
coming months." Steve Del Bosco, VIA Rail's chief customer officer,
stated that "VIA Rail is on track towards implementation of a new
Web-based distribution platform for travel agencies, brokers and
corporate customers."
HYATT AND
OPENJAW TECHNOLOGIES have partnered to enable Hyatt
customers around the world to book any Hyatt property using their
choice among 17 languages. Hyatt will do so using OpenJaw's xRez
offering, which is an XML-based online reservations platform. To
implement the agreement, OpenJaw partnered with Translations.com,
which translates the room type and rate plan information into the
multiple languages on the Hyatt booking site. OpenJaw is hosting
and operating the site from its headquarters in Dublin.
ADELMAN
TRAVEL GROUP, the Wisconsin-headquartered travel
management firm, has introduced a proprietary, Web-based product,
the Automated Pre-Trip (APT) Approval System, which enables travel
managers to review employees travel itineraries prior to automated
ticketing, the company said. The travel manager can then key in on
travelers' violations of corporate travel policy or lost savings on
air, car and hotel bookings. APT works in tandem with both bookings
through Adelman's full-service agency or through online booking
tools used by Adelman clients.
Technology
Editor:
Dennis
Schaal
Phone: (201) 902-1904
[email protected]
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